Close To You
by dharmamonkey
Summary: "Even with all of the financial and intellectual contradictions," she told him, "I still feel close to you." An alternate ending to the plumbing repair scene at the end of "Bond in the Boot" (5x2), told from Brennan's point of view.


**Close To You**

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**By:** dharmamonkey  
**Rating:** M  
**Disclaimer:** _I don't own Bones. I am, however, interested in renting Booth. A five-hour minimum would apply._

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**A/N: ** _A few months ago, reader and fellow writer_** LJLanham **_was looking for a little something to jump-start her muse. Inspired by the "Fill in the Blank" ficathon that I participated in which gave birth to my story "Communion", I suggested she consider another FITB sort of scenario involving a different episode: what happened after the fade-to-black at the end of "Bond in the Boot." She wrote a great story, "_**The Purpose in the Plumbing**_." This is *my* take on that same prompt._

**UNF alert: **_It applies! Yes, at long last, my smutmuse has returned from self-imposed exile. Minors and sensitive readers should skip this one. All others, read on.__  
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I remember thinking at the time that, while it wasn't exactly what I had originally had planned, it wasn't the worst possible way to spend a Friday night.

Booth and I were laying prone on the woven mat in front of his kitchen sink, repairing a crack in the polyvinyl chloride waste-pipe by replacing the damaged pipe with a new piece of PVC and, since we were going to be disassembling that portion of the plumbing anyway, replacing the old gaskets with new ones. We were laying there, shoulder to shoulder with our heads under the sink. Booth had the _Plumbing for Dummies_ book in front of him and was giving me instructions while I actually put the new waste pipe assembly in position.

I was enjoying myself, actually, which surprised me a little because I never did any of my own maintenance on my loft apartment. (I've never understood why I would want to squander my own valuable time doing semi-skilled labor that I can easily hire someone else to do for me.) In any event, it was probably a good thing that I was enjoying myself, because I suspect that my positive attitude was helpful in keeping Booth from getting too frustrated. He hated the idea that he had to consult a reference book to carry out a repair which, prior to his brain surgery, he was more than capable of doing on his own without any assistance or reference to instructional texts.

I picked up the L-shaped piece of PVC that was going to be mounted on the top of another piece of pipe.

"For the next step," Booth said, reading from the _Dummies_ book, "you need to attach the elbow using a PVC cement there." I reached for the steel can of adhesive and pulled the cap (which had a brush applicator attached to it) off. "Stick that little fuzzy ball in there and swish it around," he told me. "Got it?"

"It stinks," I said, scrunching up my nose at the noxious odor of petroleum distillates as I applied the cement to the 'male' portion of the assembly to which I was attaching the elbow piece.

Booth turned and shot me a puzzled look.

"Yeah," he said, his voice even and devoid of even the faintest snicker. I could hear his seriousness and focus in the absence of humor in his voice. "Well, you smell dead bodies and _this_ stinks?" He rolled his eyes a little but still didn't smile. "Okay."

I deduced from his humorlessness that he was anxious or unnerved for some reason—perhaps because he was unhappy about the idea that he needed assistance doing something he'd always been able to do for himself before. Hearing the faint sadness in his voice, I felt a little sad for him, but I blinked away the thought and spread the adhesive evenly on the top of the vertical pipe segment.

"There's a beautiful logic to this," I mused, my smile brightening my voice as I finished swiping the ball brush applicator around the outside of the pipe and set it back into the can before reaching for the L-joint and placing it on top of the vertical pipe. "It's like reconstructing the circulatory system. The water is the blood. The pipes are the veins." This little project was fun. To be honest, I had always liked doing things with Booth, even things that aren't directly related to the work we do together. It wasn't just that we made a complementary team. There was something else. He said once that, _"You and me, Bones, we just 'click.' Like peanut butter and jelly." _Setting aside his ludicrous mix of metaphors, there was truth in what he said.

Booth shuffled the pages of the book and rolled over onto his side. "Right, right," he said as reached his arm across to where I was holding the L-shaped piece onto the vertical piece I'd just applied adhesive to. "So what you need to do is apply some pressure and hold it there for a minute," he told me, placing his hand on top of mine.

His long, thick fingers curled around mine as he pressed down, and I felt a shiver pass through me as the warmth of his hand contrasted against the slight coolness of the PVC pipe I was holding onto. My breath caught in my throat as his hand seemed to quiver a bit against mine. My cheeks flushed as I turned and looked at him. He was staring back at me, his warm brown eyes wide and suddenly a little dark as his brows arched with a hesitant expectation.

After a long, awkward moment, he made an odd little sound in the back of his throat and moved his hand back towards the flexible hose on the end of the pipe. We were very close, physically, at that point, less than a foot apart as we worked in a tightly confined space, and there was an intimacy about it—I could smell the spicy musk of his sweat mixed with the scent of his soap and deodorant and heard every breath he took as we lay there—and for that reason, I suppose, his touch had seemed all the more intimate.

"Right," he said, his voice cracking slightly at the edges as he rolled away. He swallowed and our eyes met again. "You know, just making sure that it's safe," he explained. I puzzled at his use of the word _"safe"_—_safe from what? _I wondered. Then, as if he had heard the question I'd posed in my mind, he quickly clarified, "Student-teacher...student-teacher."

I laughed at that, as much because of the awkwardness as the irony that he was teaching me something that he himself used to know but couldn't remember, and then he began laughing, too. Our laughter seemed to shatter the delicate awkwardness that had been hanging between us, and I felt myself relax as I smiled back at him.

"You know, Bones," he said, his voice low yet bright even as I heard him hesitate a little. He licked his lips the way he often did when he was nervous or uncertain about something. "I'm...I'm glad that, uh, we don't have any secrets between each other."

"Yeah, I like that," I replied, trying to keep an evenness to my voice even though I felt a flipping sensation in my belly and a wave of light-headedness wash over me.

_We don't have any secrets between each other. _

The moment he said it, I knew it wasn't true (at least for me and, I suspected, despite what he'd just said, that the same might be true for him). There were a number of secrets I'd kept from him—secrets I'd kept not out of malice, but because I felt safer somehow not baring those things to him, knowing that he would, as is his nature, want to explore and dig deeper into the subjects of those secrets. So there were things I knew and felt which I'd kept to myself, secrets I shared only with myself.

And the one secret I'd guarded more than any other and which had, especially since the day we found out he had a brain tumor—the day I watched the doctors saw open his skull and remove the benign growth and the four days after that when he lingered in a deep coma, unresponsive to all but the loudest noises and most painful stimuli—was the fact that Booth was the most important person in my life, and that the very thought of losing him terrified me. I suppose the experience of almost losing him terrified me enough to finally admit to myself what may have been true for a long, long time: that I cared deeply for him, and that I wanted him. I wanted him, not just as a friend and a partner, but...

_Well..._

I felt a flash of self-consciousness as I considered all the times I'd thought about him in a way that went well beyond the metaphorical boundary he'd drawn between us the second year we'd worked together. I doubted if he had any idea the number of nights I'd spent laying in my bed thinking about him—remembering the two times we'd kissed and the way his tongue felt and tasted as it slid against mine and the hungry, grasping way his lips had plucked at mine that night in the rain when I'd walked away from what surely would have been one of the greatest sexual experiences of my life—and wondered if he had ever thought of _me_ that way. I'd assumed he hadn't, because if he had thought of me in a sexual way, why would he have drawn that line? Surely I was alone in this, I thought, and so I kept my thoughts and feelings a secret.

The line between us had caused me to keep my distance but, even during the time I was with Sully, I'd still find myself wondering what it would have been like had Booth and I slept together during that first case after all. The line didn't change the way I felt about him or dampen the burning attraction I'd felt toward him. The line didn't do anything other than demand I keep my distance and my silence, and because _he_ drew that line and because I respected him, I respected the line and kept those thoughts a secret.

"I mean," he continued, his soft voice jerking me out of the thicket of my own thoughts. "If we have something on our mind we just...we just share it." The last two words passed between his lips as scarcely more than a whisper.

I felt my heart flutter and I'm sure my eyes widened a little at that, wondering if he was trying to set me up for some kind of big revelatory announcement. Was he going to tell me something as a way of letting me down easy? I was uncertain, and that uncertainty manifested as a sudden wave of nausea that crested and swirled briefly in the pit of my belly. The nausea passed, yet still I felt afraid and exposed.

_What if I am the only one? _I wondered. _What if it's just me? What if he doesn't feel for me the way I feel about him? _Perhaps, I thought, Dr. Sweets was right, and the dreams Booth had in his coma—the details of which weren't ever shared with me, though what I had been told seemed to echo the general arc of the novel I wrote during the four days I spent at his bedside at George Washington University Hospital—were not reflections of his true feelings about me, but rather a temporary side-effect of post-surgical amnesia.

"Sure," I said, my reply almost reflexive.

I saw him nod and smile faintly, his dark eyebrows flashing once before his brown eyes swiveled away, averted from my gaze as he waited to see what I would say. I suddenly found myself at a loss for words. I wasn't sure what he was trying to do by talking about secrets and sharing, but I couldn't help but think he was trying to tell me something. Unsure of anything about us (or between us) other than where we were, physically, in that moment but unable to resist the boyish vulnerability in his soft, warm brown eyes, I knew I had to say something. _But what? _I asked myself, hesitating for another moment as I struggled to say something but not too much.

"Even with all of the financial and intellectual contradictions," I said, choosing my words carefully and speaking them evenly as I watched for his reaction. "I still feel close to you."

I could tell by the very slight upward jerk of his chin and the way his broad forehead creased as he looked up and saw our hands next to one another as we held the pipe in place that he realized the strange truth of what I had said—both metaphorical, in the sense that what was at first a strained working relationship between us had grown into an intimate, meaningful friendship, and literal, given that we were still laying shoulder-to-shoulder on his kitchen floor, close enough together to hear the sound of one another breathing. Although I can't be certain, I swear that in that moment, the one or two seconds before he spoke, that I heard his breath actually hitch in his throat as his deep-set brown eyes blinked back at me. I found myself looking into those eyes, trying to discern what he was thinking, but was yanked from my silent reverie when he started speaking again.

"Right," he croaked, "because you know, none of that really matters anyway."

I felt a strange twitter in the pit of my belly and, for reasons I wasn't sure about at the time, I couldn't help but smile at that. "Sometimes, looking at it through your eyes," I told him, "I believe that."

We just looked at each other for a minute—well, not really a minute but for what seemed like quite an extended span of time—before he finally broke the silence again.

Booth loosened his grasp on the pipe and gave it a quick wiggle, then said, "Alright, pipe seems tight and secure." He pulled his hand away and gave the pipe one last look. "Hold on there," he said as he rolled back onto his stomach and reached his arm over my back, forcing me to hug the floor so he could bring his arm around my right shoulder as he reached for the shutoff valve in front of me. "Let me just open up the water."

He opened the little trapdoor in the cabinet floor and turned the old copper valve wheel. I could feel the warmth of his body heat and the firmness of his musculature as his bicep and forearm pressed against my back. Another odd flutter tittered in my lower abdomen and I felt a faint shiver pass through me at the contact.

"There," he grunted as he withdrew his arm and I felt a curious sinking sensation, like a feeling of loss, as his arm pulled away and I was suddenly bereft of his physical contact. Rolling back onto his side, he gave me a curt nod and said, "You can take your hands off now, Bones."

I tried to ignore the way my body had responded to his close physical contact and kept my eyes fixed on the white plastic PVC pipe I was still holding tightly with my hand. Without so much as glancing over at him, I asked, "You sure?"

"Positive," he assured me, his deep voice slightly ragged as he drew in a breath. I let go of the pipe and crossed my arms beneath me as I leaned into them and glanced over at my partner. "Look at that, huh?" he said with a happy grin of triumph. "Nice and secure."

"No drip," I said with a smile as I waved the open palm of my hand underneath the junction of the two pipes.

"No drip," he parroted back with a wide grin that made me laugh. The smile suddenly faded a little from his face. "You're a…"

He hesitated for a moment and I found myself wondering what was going on in that mind of his. Booth had been strangely guarded in the weeks since he came back to work after recovering from his brain surgery, and I had frequently struggled to discern his mood amid the reticence he displayed in our interactions. It had made me self-conscious, but as I saw his thin lips broaden with another smile, I blinked away my worries.

"You're a good student," he told me.

"Oh," I said, warmed by his words of praise and, more so, by the latent surge of confidence I heard in them. "Only as good as my teacher," I assured him.

No sooner had I smiled at him when a fanlike spray of water burst from the elbow joint that we had just moments earlier assured ourselves was secure and drip-free. The water spewed in both directions, soaking my hair and spraying directly into Booth's eyes, temporarily blinding him as he grimaced.

"Ahhh!" I cried, trying to shield myself with my arms as I tried to figure out how to extricate myself from the cabinet that Booth and I had squeezed ourselves into. "Turn it off!" I told him, my voice coming across as more of a screech than anything as I crawled backwards, brushing against Booth as I sat up and saw him still laying there, presumably stunned by the sudden spray that was soaking his T-shirt and splattering his face with tap water.

"Huh?" he grunted, wincing as he leaned away from the spray, his brow furrowing as he realized he would have to roll over and lean _into _the offending spray into order to access and actuate the shutoff valve. "Ahhhh...ahhhh...ahahahah!"

After he finally shut off the water, Booth shook his head, sending little beads of water splattering as he finally crawled out from under the sink. He sat back on his haunches and looked at me with a sheepish grin, then brought his hand up and wiped the water off his face.

"Ugh," he said with a snort, leaning back into his hands as he shook his head and laughed. "We're a mess."

His heather gray T-shirt was so thoroughly soaked that it clung to him like a second skin, allowing me to see every sculpted shape and curve of his well-toned chest, including the faint outline of his tight male nipples. I felt my skin flush hot, though I, too, was soaked and, if anything, should have felt a chill.

"So," I said, my voice a little breathless as I brought my eyes up away from his beautifully-structured chest and met his gaze. "What do we do now?" I asked him.

He turned and looked at the under-sink plumbing with a frown. For a moment, I had to bite back a grin as I watched him stare at the faulty elbow that was still dripping from its explosive failure just a minute earlier.

"I guess I need to call the super to send someone to fix my sink," he sighed, his voice wavering a little as I could hear him trying to bolster himself lest his embarrassment and disappointment bleed through. His cheek twitched and his eyes widened, and I gave a little pout of my lips then a faint smile so that he would know that, as frustrated as he felt at that moment, I didn't think any less of him.

"Booth," I said softly. "It's okay. What I meant was, what are _we_ going to do? If you don't have a working kitchen sink, it makes cooking a bit impractical, and given your past experience with your landlord, I doubt he'll send anyone out to fix your sink before Monday morning."

He sighed a curse and looked up at the ceiling, his jaw grinding as he began to seethe. "What an asshole," he muttered. "I should've—"

I cut him off before he could work himself into a foul-tempered spiral of frustration. "Look," I said. "Our clothes are soaked. How about we change into dry clothes—maybe you can lend me an old T-shirt of yours—and let's go to the market. You can have dinner at my place." I hesitated and considered adding, _and you're free to spend the night if you want, _but a nervous flutter in my chest jettisoned that idea as quickly as it arose. "Okay?"

Standing up, I looked around his kitchen for the hand-towel he usually kept hanging from the handle of his refrigerator door, but I couldn't find it. Intent on wiping the dripping water from my face, I strode into his bedroom and made my way towards his bathroom, where I nearly ripped the towel off the rack next to his sink. I covered my face with the towel, trying to dry off without smudging my mascara, and had just exited the bathroom when I nearly walked face-first into Booth's chest.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Umm..."

A sheepish, awkward smile cracked his face and made him look wonderfully boyish as he stood there, his soaked gray T-shirt clinging to his chest as we each froze. For a minute, I felt as though couldn't even breathe, which of course I actually could—and did—since in that very moment, my nostrils were filling with the musky, manly smell of him as I looked up at him. His smile faded again as our eyes locked for what seemed at the time like an eternity as I found myself completely transfixed by the look in his eyes and the way those eyes seem to melt from a warm brown hue that had been a source of comfort and friendship for nearly five years to something hotter and hungrier as his pupils dilated and those mahogany orbs darkened to the color of blackstrap molasses. I saw his pupils pulse once, then twice as his mouth fell open with an almost inaudible sigh, and with each dark throb I saw in his eyes, I felt a corresponding throb between my legs.

No sooner did I draw a sharp breath between my teeth than Booth's gaze suddenly swiveled downward and I knew he was staring at my chest. For whatever reason, I'd decided to wear one of my casual blouses that day, a light blue button-down made of a thin, translucent rayon material that was almost gauzy and, thanks to our plumbing mishap, damn near see-through. Underneath it I wore a correspondingly minimal bra of powder-blue nylon with tiny spaghetti straps and I knew without following his gaze that neither my blouse nor my bra left much to the imagination. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and heard a quiet strangulated growl sound from low in his throat as he looked up again. Our eyes met once more but this time, there was no mistaking the tightly-coiled longing that hung in the air between us as we each looked at the other, our muscles crackling with tension as each millisecond rolled with uncertainty into the next.

It was Booth who finally broke the silence between us.

He drew a breath and whispered, "Bones, I…"

Then he fell silent again, his pink, slightly-chapped lips parted just enough for me to see the point of his tongue between them. My heart began to race as the sight of his lips made me remember what it felt like to kiss them, and the brief glimpse of his tongue reminded me of all the times I wondered what that tongue could do if put to proper use. How many hundreds of times had I lay in bed or stood in my shower—or even sat in the Sequoia next to him like I had just the day before on our way back from Langley—and thought about what it would be like to run my fingers through his messy, spiky brown hair as his head bobbed between my legs?

Booth licked his lips and drew another breath as if to try again and say something of some gravity, but as I saw that little tongue of his dart out and slide over his lips again, something welled up inside of me and burst, propelling me forward as I stepped toward him and pressed my hand to his chest. I leaned forward and raised my chin, closing my eyes and swallowing the quiet gasp he drew as I pressed my lips to his. For a second or two, he seemed to freeze, his lips hard and unmoving beneath mine. I felt my stomach swirl then flip and I was certain I'd made a terrible mistake.

Then his lips moved against mine, trembling slightly before he pulled away a little, just far enough that our lips no longer made contact but keeping his face close enough to mine that I could feel the twin streams of warm breath from his nose tickling my upper lip.

Despite the closeness between and the fact that he hadn't really pulled away completely, his hesitation and his silence unnerved me, and I felt a little faint as my heart raced in my chest. Certain that I'd committed a very serious error in presuming that he was willing or interested in acting on our obvious mutual attraction, I could no longer bide the silence between us.

"Booth, I—"

I wasn't sure what I was going to say to him, but he saved me from an inevitable stammer when he reached for my hip with his strong, broad left hand and hugged me towards him as he brought his right hand up and cupped my jaw in his palm. I watched his heavy-lidded eyes darken further as turned his head slightly to one side and swallowed whatever it was I was going to say when he covered my mouth with his.

A low, almost possessive murmur sounded in his throat as his lips parted further and grasped at mine, his mouth plucking at my lips a couple of times before I felt his tongue, his warm, wet, strong, hungry tongue slide across the edge of my top lip in the fractions of a second before our mouths seemed to fuse completely.

The spicy, hot taste of his mouth was better than I remembered and I felt him restraining himself when the almost-angry kiss he'd started with quickly softened to a gentle, longing exploration as his tongue slid over my teeth and glanced against mine, then retreated again as he pulled just ever so slightly away before leaning in again and grasping, probing for more.

I don't remember exactly how long we stood there like that, kissing and murmuring as our hands mimicked our mouths, grasping and grabbing as they moved across hips, underneath shirts, sliding over the smooth, warm skin of bellies and lower backs, until the tiny pricks of light before our eyes demanded we to pull apart to breathe. We each took a half-step backwards and drank in the sight of the other, our breaths falling hard and heavy as our eyes locked again.

A second or two or three passed in a panting silence before I stepped towards him again, my hands immediately reaching for the bottom hem of his water-logged gray T-shirt. I tugged at it, letting my fingertips tease the smooth, damp skin of his flat belly for a moment before stroking my thumb over his navel. Booth hissed at the contact and grunted, then raised his arms so I could peel his shirt off of him. I slung the wet garment aside and quickly brought my hands to palm the damp, sticky skin of his broad, lean chest. I drew my hands over his skin, exploring and touching and inventorying the strength I'd seen at work a thousand times before but never been able to touch and feel like this. I let my fingers streak down that damp, sticky expanse of skin down to his waist and was about to hook my forefingers underneath the waistband of his soaked jeans when he brushed my hands away with a shove of his forearms, shaking his head as he sighed my name.

"Bones…"

He stepped towards me this time, his brown eyes pitch dark and hungry but not at all menacing as he reached for the tiny pearlescent buttons on the placket of my blouse. Booth's hands are large and strong, and his fingers long and thick, and I watched his wide brow crease with concentration as he tried to work free the top-most button. After a moment of struggle, he'd managed to thumb it free, then moved down to the next one. I wanted to lean in and kiss his forehead, his beautiful, broad, masculine forehead, but held back when I saw his big hands tremble as he fumbled with the second button.

"Fuck it," I muttered as I stepped backwards, almost stumbling myself as I gently pushed him away. I felt a shiver crackle through me and knew from the wobble in my legs that my hands were probably going to shake as badly as his, so I reached down, crossed my arms and grabbed the bottom hem of my shirt, pulling it up and over my head. I heard Booth draw a sharp breath as I let the wet blouse fall to the floor with a quiet _plunk, _then reached back and unhooked my bra, letting it, too, fall to the ground as the sudden feel of cool, fan-driven air on my damp skin made my nipples tighten.

"Oh my God," he sighed as he stepped towards me, almost lunging as his big, trembling hands closed around my breasts, the calluses on the tops of his palms, right below the base of his fingers, brushing roughly over the points of my nipples, making me wince at the contact. Giving my right breast a gentle but wanting squeeze, his left hand quickly fell away and closed around my hip as he twirled me around and began walking me towards his bed. I felt the round edge of the bed against the backs of my thighs and fell back onto the bed, crab-crawling my way backwards, stopping suddenly as I felt the uncomfortable dampness of my jeans under me. I leaned back into my hands and watched him as he followed me, crawling onto the bed on his hands and knees, stalking after me like a panther.

He hovered over my legs, leaning heavy into his hands and I saw the muscles of his arms and shoulders shift and twitch beneath his olive skin as he seemed to hesitate a little. The sexy, crooked grin on his face and the adorably frustrated furrowing of his brow left little doubt that he was not hedging about whether we should do this, but more, apparently, about how, since we were now both in his bed, clad in wet, skin-clinging blue jeans. I must have kicked off my slip-on Keens at some point because I realized then that I was barefoot. I looked up and met Booth's dark gaze as he began to retreat towards the foot of the bed.

As soon as he stood up again, I seized the opportunity and leaned back against the bed, glancing up at him as I unbuttoned my jeans. His eyes narrowed at the sound of my zipper giving way and his lower jaw shifted forward with a throaty grunt as I shoved the heavy, snug denim over my hips and down my thighs, wriggling out of them and kicking them to the side as I watched Booth thumb open the top button of his jeans. He drew his tongue along the underside of his front teeth as he stood there unmoving and took in the sight of me laying there wearing only a pair of pale blue cotton panties. Focused as I was on the play of his tongue between his teeth, I didn't notice that he'd unbuttoned his fly until I heard him grunt out a self-conscious little laugh.

I looked down and smiled the instant I saw the reason. The button-fly of his Levi's gaped open to reveal a dark thatch of curly hair.

"Umm, sorry," he said, his cheeks flushing a little as he raised a brow and grinned. "Tomorrow's, uhh, laundry day."

I shook my head. "I don't care," I muttered, squirming my hips a little against his duvet as I watched him slip his hands underneath the waistband of his jeans and begin to slide his Levi's over his hips. As I watched him bare the last of himself to me, I reached down and slipped out of my own panties, wanting to offer him a view of all of me. "Get over here," I said with a chuckle, kicking away the last bit of my clothing as he stepped out of his jeans. His eyes widened as he realized what I'd done, and moments later, he was where he'd been before, hovering over me as he leaned into his hands, his knees tucked between my thighs.

I slid back towards the headboard and felt a frisson of want as I turned the bed down, shoving the heavy duvet away from me with my feet. Booth threw the covers off the bed where they fell to the floor with an unceremonious _fwump, _then crawled forward again, tucking himself between my parted thighs. For another moment, he loomed over me, his eyes wide and his face flushed as he looked at me. He leaned into one forearm and drew his hand over my forehead, caressing my hair and sighing as I felt him press into my thigh, hard and thick with arousal, and I heard myself hiss as my body throbbed wetly in anticipation. I reached for his waist, sliding my hands over his bony, narrow hips and grabbing his ass as I pulled him into me.

"Shhhhh," he whispered. "Easy, Bones, mmkay? I—"

He wanted foreplay. I could see it in the dark, lazy gaze of his heavy-lidded eyes and feel it in the way his long, thick fingers threaded into my hair, but for me, the entire last hour had been foreplay—laying on the floor of his kitchen, squeezed shoulder-to-shoulder into the cabinet underneath his sink, my nose filling with the smell of his sweat and the scent of his Irish Spring soap and Old Spice deodorant as he pressed against me and leaned over me to open the shutoff valve—and the way my body had been thrumming, I wasn't sure I'd survive him working me over the way I knew he'd want to. Not this time.

"Not this time," I told him. "I need you, Booth, and—"

He didn't give me a chance to finish. He gritted his teeth and growled, then leaned in and kissed me, his delicious pink lips plucking at mine, his sweet, strong tongue invading my mouth, plundering it as I felt every inch of my skin burn hot as I yearned for him to plunder the rest of me that way. He tried to pull away, perhaps to slow me down, but I would have none of it. I raked my fingers through his hair and pulled his face back to mine, licking my tongue into his mouth as he moaned, jerking his hip into me with a soft grunt, distracting me just long enough to break off the kiss and begin nipping his way along my jaw and down my neck. I could feel him fighting it, trying to stretch out the experience, to slow things down, even as his own body howled for satisfaction each time he rocked his hips into me.

I arched my head back into his pillow and sighed as I felt him drag his lips, those dry, pink, sexy, wonderfully masculine lips of his over my collarbone towards my breast. My body felt like it was on fire, throbbing and vibrating as I felt his weight on me like a tease.

"Booth," I sighed, pleading with him to stop even as his mouth drew a sharp hiss of pleasure as it closed around my nipple. "No, please…" He murmured against my sensitive skin and drew my flesh into his mouth with a hard, pulling suck, then released me with an amused, self-satisfied grin on his handsome face. I took a breath and was about to say something more when I felt him pull his hips away from me. At first, I closed my thighs more tightly around him almost as a matter of instinct, then apparently there was still a faint glimmer of my rational mind left functioning after Booth's talented lips sent the rest of it sputtering into useless oblivion, because it occurred to me that he was going to give me what I wanted.

Or, rather, what we both wanted.

His forearm brushed against the inside of my thigh as he gave himself a couple of quick, firm tugs, then swiped himself over the length of my swollen, slippery folds before drawing his hips back and pressing into me, slowly but with purpose.

I opened my mouth and groaned a loud _ohh _as I felt him sink deeply into me, stretching me and taking up every bit of slack my body had to give until his pubis came to rest against mine. For a minute, neither of us moved as we gazed into one another's eyes and observed the gravity of the moment. I arched my hips up off the bed and with a nod encouraged him to move, and so he did, rolling his hips back until only the tip of him lay inside of me, then rocked forward again and plunged back into me with a quiet grunt, driving all the way up and into me as his mouth fell open with a long sigh.

"Oh my God," he groaned as he settled into a steady, two-stroke rhythm, plunging hard and deep into me before easing himself out again, each time grinding against my clit as his hips came to rest against mine.

I snaked my hands around his hips and pressed my fingers into the firm, smooth, warm skin of his ass, letting the sharp edges of my nails scrape across his skin as his strokes became harder and faster, each rolling thrust seeming to come more quickly and hitting me more deeply than the one before. Each time he rolled his hips back and rocked into me, I would swing my pelvis upward to meet him, scraping a path with my nails from his ass up his back to the base of his shoulder blades and down again. He felt so good inside of me, it seemed that everything else around us—the walls, the furniture, the light streaming in from his bathroom and living room, the quiet murmur of jazz emanating from the apartment below, even the feel of the mattress below us—melted away and all I could feel was him, hot and hard and thick, slipping into me, peeling me open from the inside out and hurling me head-first into an ever more tightly-coiling spiral of sensation.

I knew he was close when one of his hands slipped into the space between us and began to rub tight, tiny circles over my clit.

"Come on, baby," he whispered, his breath hot against my shoulder. The rhythm of his strokes became more ragged and uneven as he sucked in a breath between his teeth. I must have winced at a particularly sharp jolt because he stilled his thumb and backed off slightly, then began again as I felt myself start to tighten around him. "Come on, baby," he said again. "Let go."

I closed my eyes and dug my fingernails into his ass, which seemed to light off something inside of him. He suddenly pulled his hand away and growled, then began to move faster, slamming harder and deeper into me with each stroke, and the added pressure of his movements on my clit became my undoing. Everything began spinning around me and I heard my quiet sighs and soft moans begin to peak as a certain feeling of weightlessness buoyed me mere moments before I broke, clenching hard around him as all the delicious tension snapped and my pelvic muscles fluttered around him. My heart was still racing in my chest when, just seconds later, he let go of a breath and grunted sharply, slamming into me one last time before I felt him swell inside of me and hold himself there with an _ohhhhh_ as he emptied himself into me.

"Ohhh, fuck…"

For a few moments, Booth anchored himself there as his body relaxed and his heaving breaths slowly returned to normal. I lay there looking up at him, loose-limbed and wonderfully content as I felt the last lazy pulses of his warm release seep into me. His arms trembled and I sensed he was tiring, so I gave his wonderful ass a light squeeze and sighed. He rolled his hips and slipped out of me, hissing quietly at the loss of contact or, perhaps, feeling the fan blow a stream of air across his slick, sensitive cock. He collapsed beside me and breathed a sharp _hoooooh _before he turned his head and kissed my shoulder.

I smiled at the gesture and looked at him, curious what his familiar face looked like in the afterglow of satisfying sex. His brown eyes were warmer and brighter than they'd been just minutes before at the peak of his arousal, and his eyelids fell lazily over his eyes. The rest of his features were slackened, relaxed and empty of tension as he slowly snaked his arm around my shoulder and pulled me towards him. Feeling decidedly and deliciously feminine in that moment, I tucked myself snugly against his side and rested my head on the crook of his muscular shoulder.

His eyes narrowed and I suspect he knew I was studying him. Rather than say anything, he simply turned his head again and pressed a kiss to my forehead, smiling against my skin as a quiet _hmmmm_ sounded in his throat.

I considered saying something, but nothing came to mind. For once, it seemed that there was no need for words. Not then, in any case. Later, we would talk, for there was a great deal we would need to discuss. But in that particular, singular moment, we didn't need any words, and so I nuzzled into his shoulder, closed my eyes and relaxed into the warm, wonderful feeling of having his strong arm snaked around my waist.

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**A/N: **_Hmmmm. Well, I'm not sure what you all thought of that. My smutmuse has been a real bitch lately (as in, all but absent, which is why this is my first smutty solo effort in several months), but she seems to be back. I hope this turned out alright and worked for you. Let me know what you think. Share your thoughts as I've shared mine. Consider leaving a review. In any case, thanks for reading!_

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_****__* Special note to Dharmasera readers * __Chapter 4 of our crossover story "**Hand to Hand**" (the 9th story in our Bones/Angel crossover series) has posted. It includes a scene with Booth and Brennan in the hospital delivery room after the birth of their daughter. A serious fluff advisory applies to the warm fuzziness in that chapter. You'll smile. You'll laugh. You may even say "squee." We're quite proud of it. So, what are you waiting for? Go, **read**! And if you're new to the crossover series and don't know where to begin, send me a PM and I'll point the way._


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